Wistful Thinking
by Eternal Dumas
Summary: [Warnings: Slightly disturbing imagery, uncertain first person point of view] The Earl enjoys one of his favorite past times.


_I am not dead._

His first existing thought, strung together like loose-bearing threads not yet tightened upon the loom that was his mind. Dead thoughts, dead memories drifted past his closed eyes and faded into the scars, bandages and dried blood upon him.

_Open your eyes._

But he was tired. His bones and muscles and cells were tired with an age-old weariness that did not fit his youthful body.

_I don't want to be alive._

Regret.

The relentless, unberarble pain of being alive, knowing that he was alive and Allen was not. There was breath in his decaying lungs, rotten blood that pumped through the oozing acids in his heart. It made him sick.

He had betrayed the Innocence and thrown it away as though it had been worth nothing. Thrown it away and wished it had not existed even if all of mankind was to be destroyed for his selfishness. As long as Allen was still allowed to live, it would not have mattered. But he had betrayed the Innocence and therefore, he should be dead.

_Cold._

Was he dying now? No, if he had been dying he should have felt it. After all, he had already experienced it many times. Now, his chest no longer heaved in exertion for breath and the suffocating heat that melted insides was no longer there.

_Hollow and empty._

A void existed now, where something else had once existed. An unnamed thing, a substance that lived in him and had lived _for_ him, what had it been?

He remembered, and now he wants to forget.

His oozing heart suddenly ceased and twisted upon itself, his lungs peeled off another layer of rotten remains and his eyes ceased to sleep in the dark.

_What did you expect when you opened your eyes?_

He had expected to see Allen. He had expected to see the cursed boy that was always too kind and too selfless, smiling down at him with relief in those kind, kind eyes of his. But he did not see Allen; he did not see those kind, kind eyes of the cursed-but-wonderful boy as he, instead, stared up at the reflecting glass monocles of the Millennium Earl's.

A grin that could have (should have, would have, they were all the same) looked genuinely gentle had the Earl once been human, once had a heart instead of a grinning void in place tore apart the remaining pieces of his lungs and left him choking on their foul scent. They clogged his throat, the tissues and sinews that stretched themselves to make room for what little heaving breathes of air he could endure.

The (fake, it was fake) genuinely gentle smile had never once left the Earl's face as he gazed (hatefully) lovingly down upon the squirming soon-to-be-corpse.

"Now, now, you mustn't overexert yourself my dead," the Earl (cruelly) gently crooned.

_He speaks to you like he does to an Akuma._

He did not. The Earl spoke words oozing with honey rotted with souls when he spoke with the Akuma. With the Noahs, his words buried their smell away and became soaked in a deep wine of blood.

_The Earl is human._

He was not. Not. Not. Not. Human he was not. Human he was not. But was it him or was it he that a Human was not?

Don't know. Don't know. Don't want to know. Know. Know. You know. You Know.

No. No. No. Don't know. Don't know.

_A corpse is no longer human a corpse is simply dead._

Laugh. Laugh. Laugh like no tomorrow. Cry. Cry. Cry until your heart stops twisting. Break. Break and fall apart.

"Dead." His lungs, what little left of his lungs, was still giving him life. Why else was he able to stop moving and breathe?

_Speak._

He just did. He didn't want to anymore.

_Speak again to know you are alive._

"Why am I not dead?"

That horrible, genuinely gentle (it was oh, so cruel) smile.

* * *

Uh, this was written one day on a sort of whim and I just decided to post it. Constructive criticism welcomed, flames will be used to light Tyki's cigarettes. Extremely weird, I know and for anyone who's wondering about whose point of view this is from, I'll let you decide. Just let your imagination run wild considering that I don't know myself, who exactly the Earl is staring down at. Suggestions anyone?


End file.
